


Second Chances

by Androids_in_Metropolis



Category: Palo Alto (2013)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Graffiti, Love, Romance, Slightly AU look at things, Teddy Mention, adhd fred, getting better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 01:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4687244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Androids_in_Metropolis/pseuds/Androids_in_Metropolis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe they get second chances too?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Chances

“Tell me you love me,” Fred asked hoarsely, looking at Emily. He felt sick, and he could feel tears pricking at his eyes. “Please, Please say it!” His voice was beginning to raise, his hands tangled harshly in her hair. His fingernails scratched across Emily’s skull leaving track marks across her skin. Emily wasn’t fighting, which made Fred more desperate to have her say it. He wished she would fight him...hit him, kick him, call him names. He needed some sort of response.

Emily was kneeling at his knees, her lips trembling slightly. She didn’t love Fred. She didn’t like that he never told her he loved her though he demanded such things from her. He never was gentle with her unless he was drunk, he was never soft or kind...he just had wants. He just needed human contact, just like her. She didn’t love the people she gave herself to, she was just lonely...lost. 

“No,” she whispered, standing up. “No, Fred. I can’t.” Emily was crying now, real tears dripping down her chin and hitting her bare feet. She and Fred were standing next to her pool, staring each other down. She kept eye contact with him, her lips trembling. “Fred, I can’t say that, you know that. You know we don’t mean anything...you know you just want me to suck you off and then for it to be over. You know you aren’t ever gonna take me out or bring me home and tell me that YOU love me!” She was shouting now, the beer bottle she had in her left hand held with such a grip as to turn her knuckles white. 

Fred was angry and sad and scared. She was leaving him. She was gonna never want to see him again and then he would be alone. He would be alone again. He would be all alone...no one to come to when he wanted to talk but didn’t know how. No one who would distract him, no one to tell him it was going to be okay. He didn’t even bother shouting back, and began to turn away. 

Fred felt a sharp pain in the back of his head. 

“Don’t just turn away from me!” Emily cried, the bottle she had been holding in shards around her feet, the shag edged neck trembling in her hand. “Why don’t you look at me?” she asked, answering her own question in her head; Because you don’t really care. 

Fred ran, tears streaming down his cheeks. Emily had hit him...they were done. He had turned away because he hadn’t wanted to hear her say it, but the blood dripping down his neck was just as good as words; We’re over. He was dizzy, he was tired, he didn’t know where he was going...there was no where for him to go now. He didn’t want to go home where his dad would no doubt be, probably chatting up his only other friend and getting high. He couldn’t go to Teddy’s house because a) they were fighting and b) he was probably with his dad. He couldn’t go to Emily…

When he became more aware of his surrounding it was night, the darkness hugging him. There were no stars. There was sound-His own harsh breathing, the sounds of cars whizzing by, the sound of his sobs, the sound of some party a few feet away in a little white house he recognized but he didn’t know why. He followed the last sound. 

It was a high school party. The kind you had when mom and dad weren’t home. It was a boozy, pulsating party. The lights were on, all the rooms overflowing. He invited himself in, recognizing some of the faces from school. He got a drink, he mingled. He talked to a few people he kinda-sorta-knew. He waved at what’s-his-face and kissed someone on the stairway. He thought he was a freshmen. He didn’t stop to check. 

Soon he was outside again, sitting in the wet grass of the host’s yard. He had a glass of flower’s in his hand, and was too taken with looking at the stars to notice the bitter, acrid taste of the slightly dirty, plant filled water. He didn’t notice when Emily came to him, sitting next to him, double taking when she saw the flowers but understanding when she saw his slack and empty face. She put her hand on his arm, pulling his face down to look at her instead of the sky. 

“Fred,” she whispered, her breath fogging the air. “I’m sorry, look...we aren’t good for each other,” she was slurring slightly, weather from the speed of her words of alcohol Fred didn’t know, nor did he care. He was too drunk to tell, anyway. He wasn’t happy; Emily, of all people, knew that. 

“Fred, please, look at me,” she said, her words repeated from earlier, though her tone has gone soft and pleading. Fred shifted his eyes from his own knees to Emily’s eyes, looking her straight in the face for the first time. He barely ever looked anyone in the eyes; It was uncomfortable. “Fred, I want to try again...but I want to do it right,” Emily explained softly, no slur present as she slowed her speech down. 

“Right?” Fred asked, his eyes and dreamy tone indicating that his head wasn’t where his body was. His head was exploring the stars. “We can’t do it right, Em. We aren’t the kind of people who get to do it right.” It was true-Kids with families that cared, like Teddy’s and Martha’s and Aprils and John’s, got to do it right. Those kids got second chances. Fred and Emily were the other type, they were the kind no one expected to do well anyway. Why try?

Emily felt her heart drop. She had thought the same thing over and over and over, but she still wanted it. She wanted it so bad. She would do anything to get a second chance, to get to have someone to bring home and introduce to her parents. She would get to have someone to go out with, someone who she could talk to. Fred would tell her what his deal was...why he was so sad. Maybe they could get help. Maybe, she blinked, maybe...maybe they’d get a second chance. 

“We get second chances, too,” Emily told Fred, wrapping her arm around his slumped shoulders. Fred was shaking in the night. She knew she could be good for him, if he would try to be good for her. They could say ‘I love you’ because they would find out what love was. THey could take it slow, and be kids just a little longer. 

“Do we?” Fred gasped, his head buried in the space between Emily’s shoulder and chest. She had wrapped her arms around him and he found that the warmth her body provided, the comfort, was better than sex. It was warmer...softer, more sustainable. There was no climax, just slow and steady warmth. It was exciting to not be excited. To be calm.

“Yes, I think we do...Fred?” 

“Yes?”

“Please, let us try it, okay?” 

“Okay.” 

\----------------------------------------

Fred was nervous as he went to Emily’s house. He had been there a thousand times, always through the window and straight into Emily’s house. Now he was knocking on the front door, making sure his shirt was on the right way out and that his fly was zipped. The door opened, Emily’s soft features greeting him and she stepped out and wrapped her arms around him, giving him a hug. 

“Hey, mom’s in the kitchen with dad. Do you want to come in and meet them?” Emily whispered, her breath tickling Fred’s ear. She had placed her hand on the back of Fred’s head, gently going over the scar where she had hit him. It was healed now, just a small scar-a small raised piece of skin-but she loved it, it reminded her of how they got better. It was part of Fred, and now, she was almost sure, she loved all of Fred. 

Fred gulped, licking his dry lips and shifting from foot to foot, scooting back from Emily and looking back at his feat. 

“I uh...are you sure you want them to know me?” he asked, knowing full and well that his name was one that was pretty well known about town. He was (had been) the bad kid, and though he had been doing his best to straighten out (a second chance) the rep still followed him around. “I mean, Em, I uh...I’m scared,” he admitted, his eyes flickering with a little bit of the manic, scared, lonely Fred that Emily had first known. 

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Emily mumbled, softly, taking Fred’s hand (large in her small one) and dragging him inside, towards the kitchen. She felt him squeeze her hand, asking for reassurance because he was scared. She squeezed his hand back. A silent assent to caring. 

“Mom, dad, Fred’s here!” She called, smiling as she guided him into the afore said room and presenting him to her mom first, who offered her hand with a smile. Fred didn’t take it, stuffing his hands in his pockets and avoiding eye contact. He didn’t know why he did it, but he just couldn’t bring himself to look at the woman who was treating him like a normal human being. He was scared. Any moment now she would be angry at him, turn him out of the house, tell him he couldn’t see Emily anymore…

None of the above happened, and the only thing that changed was that she dropped her hand, her smile still on her face. 

“We’re so glad to finally meet you, Fred. Emily has told us a lot about you,” Emily’s father said, not offering his hand, but smiling none the less. “She told us you like to paint,” he went on, seemingly unperturbed by Fred’s lack of forthcomingness. 

“No, not really Sir. I mean,” Fred stuttered, his face going red. “I’m not very good,” he mumbled, reaching his hand out for Emily’s and taking it in his own. Feeling that someone was on his side calmed him down, keeping his breathing even. “I like to paint uh...typography,” he mumbled, scrabbling for a better word than ‘graffiti’. 

Dinner wasn’t bad. 

\---------------------------------------

“I love you,” Fred whispered, his arms wrapped around Emily, his chin resting on her head as they looked over the city. They were on top of the building that Fred had once skated in, bought pot downstairs, threatened to jump off of. Now he had painted his name on the building, letting Emily press her hand print next to his name. 

“I love you,” he whispered again, laughing as he realized how easy it was to say. It was the first time he had said it to anyone, ever, in his memory. “I love you, love you, love you!” he was laughing for real now, stepping back from the edge of the building and swinging Emily around, his eyes shining. She was laughing too. 

They were dancing on the rooftop, kicking off their shoes, laughing, laughing. She took of her shirt, her bra, her tights, her skirt, laughing as she danced around on an outer city roof top with someone she had learned to trust. Fred was taking of his things, but there was no physical attraction of the moment, just dancing. Just laughing. Just smiling and laughing and crying and laughing again because they had a second chance. They had made it. 

“I love you, too,” Emily called over Fred’s laughing and the wind. “I love you.”

“I love you, Em. I’m serious. Thank you. You were the one that gave me the second chance,” Fred called, calming down now and pulling Emily close to him, their skin buzzing against each other. 

“I love you and thank you. You gave me a second chance, Fred. We did it. We made it.” 

We made it. 

We survived.

**Author's Note:**

> Please review ! If you would like to contact me another way you can do it at PaloAltomovie2013.tumblr.com


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